Film Freak Centraltag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-999282957331064452018-02-08T17:14:37-05:00TypePadFame (1980) - Blu-ray Disc + Fame (2009) [Extended Dance Edition] - DVDtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b7c94e22ae970b2018-02-08T17:14:37-05:002018-02-08T17:14:37-05:00FAME (1980) **/**** Image B Sound B Extras B starring Irene Cara, Lee Curreri, Laura Dean, Antonia Franceschi screenplay by Christopher Gore directed by Alan Parker FAME (2009) */**** Image N/A Sound C Extras D starring Debbie Allen, Charles S. Dutton, Kelsey Grammer, Megan Mullaly screenplay by Allison Burnett, based on the screenplay by Christopher Gore directed by Kevin Tancharoen by Walter Chaw Alan Parker seems to fancy himself a bit of a sociologist--a chronicler of Truth surveying man's inhumanity to man and the injustices perpetrated especially in the United States, offering up pictures that seek to expose just exactly what's wrong with his non-native land. When he makes a good movie, like Angel Heart, it's good because he's not proselytizing about corruption so much as he's indulging in his suspicions about the Home of the Brave. (Filthy with evil, right?) The matinee of appreciation for Parker is not surprisingly around fifteen, when stuff like Mississippi Burning and Midnight Express has the weight of sagacity rather than the reek of puerile outrage and unbecoming grandstanding. He's Stanley Kramer with a drug and counterculture fixation that marks him as a product less of Mod than of Free Love. Fame is the...Walter ChawEmpire Records (1995) [Remix! Special Fan Edition] - DVDtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b8d2d7654c970c2018-02-05T12:27:37-05:002018-02-05T01:16:26-05:00Empire Records: Remix! *½/**** Image B Sound A- Extras C- starring Liv Tyler, Anthony LaPaglia, Renee Zellweger, Maxwell Caulfield screenplay by Carol Heikkinen directed by Allan Moyle by Bill Chambers Allan Moyle's Empire Records has defenders too staunch to disregard--and because I listened to them, I'm left with the sensation that I chewed a piece of bubblegum until well after its flavour ran dry. The Canadian Moyle, whose inauspicious directorial debut was the 1977 tax-shelter crime flick The Rubber Gun, discovered teenagers three years later with his oddity of a second film Times Square and has rarely looked back since. Yet although his cinematic beginnings predate those of John Hughes, Moyle's Pump Up the Volume and Empire Records are eclipsed by even the lesser entries in Hughes's teen canon, such as Sixteen Candles and the Hughes-produced Pretty in Pink. RUNNING TIME 107 minutes MPAA Not Rated ASPECT RATIO(S) 2.35:1 (16x9-enhanced) LANGUAGES English DD 5.1 CC Yes SUBTITLES English French Spanish REGION 1 DISC TYPE DVD-9 STUDIO Warner I draw the comparison because Moyle, like Hughes (and unlike the hucksters behind the countless failed high-school romps of the past two decades), has empathy for his young characters--though Hughes was less reluctant...Bill ChambersElephant (2003) - DVDtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b8d2d741ef970c2018-02-04T13:20:33-05:002018-02-04T13:20:33-05:00****/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B- starring Alex Frost, Eric Deulen, John Robinson, Elias McConnell written and directed by Gus Van Sant by Walter Chaw I live about five minutes from Columbine High School. In the year following the shootings, Littleton, a strange place already, got even stranger: a man killed himself in a crowded Burger King parking lot, a child was found in a dumpster behind a local strip mall, two kids were killed in a Subway, and so on. It was mass psychic fallout, and something that none of the inquiries into Columbine seem to address; in time, I'm sure, people will forget that there were aftershocks and tremors. RUNNING TIME 80 minutes MPAA R ASPECT RATIO(S) 1.85:1 (16x9-enhanced) 1.33:1 LANGUAGES English DD 5.1 English DTS 5.1 English Dolby Surround French DD 1.0 Spanish DD 1.0 CC Yes SUBTITLES English French Spanish REGION 1 DISC TYPE DVD-14 STUDIO HBO Equating the shootings to a seismic event is an interesting thing to do, considering that so many occurred in the last couple years of the last millennium. Connecting the spots on a map might expose a fault line stretching coast to coast in a fractured United States, something...Walter ChawDrive Me Crazy (1999) - DVDtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01bb09eabdce970d2018-01-20T17:37:33-05:002018-01-20T20:46:11-05:00**/**** Image B Sound A- Extras D starring Melissa Joan Hart, Adrien Grenier, Stephen Collins, Ali Larter screenplay by Rob Thomas, based on the novel How I Created My Perfect Prom Date by Todd Strasser directed by John Schultz by Bill Chambers I've seen so many bloody teen movies over the past two years that Drive Me Crazy felt like the beginning of a new semester. All my old friends were there--the jock, the rebel, the slut--and I once again looked forward to attending a prom, here called a "Centennial." Now and again, however, the film manages to tread, if not break, new ground as it recycles that old saw about an adversarial boy and girl who fall for their own love charade as they attempt to make former sweethearts jealous. Would you believe that every single one of its characters is (gasp!) insecure? RUNNING TIME 91 minutes MPAA PG-13 ASPECT RATIO(S) 1.85:1 (16x9-enhanced) LANGUAGES English DD 5.1 English Dolby Surround French Dolby Surround CC Yes SUBTITLES English Spanish REGION 1 DISC TYPE DVD-9 STUDIO Fox Nicole (Melissa Joan Hart), a pert, plucky purveyor of school spirit, wants Brad (Gabriel Carpenter), the basketball team's star player, and almost had him,...Bill ChambersThumbsucker (2005) + The Chumscrubber (2005) - DVDstag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b7c93d203d970b2017-12-14T21:58:09-05:002017-12-14T21:58:49-05:00THUMBSUCKER **/**** DVD - Image A- Sound B+ Extras B starring Lou Pucci, Tilda Swinton, Vincent D'Onofrio, Keanu Reeves screenplay by Mike Mills, based on the novel by Walter Kirn directed by Mike Mills by Walter Chaw With the brief reprieve offered the Sundance imprint by Junebug now smelling a lot more like "fluke" than "trend," find Mike Mills's underwhelming Thumbsucker, another Sundance sensation so familiar in its affected suburban quirk that its peculiarities seem like formula and its attacks on middle-class perversity and malaise seem all too comfortable. There simply isn't much heart left in this pursuit, this punching of holes into the façade of planned communities and their plastic citizenry--this central conceit of broken people leaning on psychic crutches as the apocalypse of the day-to-day cascades in on them in blue, stylized waves. RUNNING TIME 106 minutes MPAA Unrated ASPECT RATIO(S) 2.40:1 (16x9-enhanced) LANGUAGES English DD 5.1 CC Yes SUBTITLES English French Spanish REGION 1 DISC TYPE DVD-9 STUDIO Warner RUNNING TIME 107 minutes MPAA R ASPECT RATIO(S) 2.35:1 (16x9-enhanced) LANGUAGES English DD 5.1 English Dolby Surround SUBTITLES English French Spanish REGION 1 DISC TYPE DVD-9 STUDIO DreamWorks Front and centre in this particular iteration is wispy Justin...Bill ChambersCirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (2009)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01bb09d388da970d2017-11-03T13:05:40-05:002017-11-03T13:05:40-05:00**/**** starring John C. Reilly, Ken Watanabe, Josh Hutcherson, Salma Hayek screenplay by Paul Weitz and Brian Helgeland, based on the "Cirque du Freak" series of books by Darren Shan directed by Paul Weitz by Ian Pugh Maybe it's a cop-out to dismiss Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (hereafter The Vampire's Assistant) with that banal X-meets-Y idiom ("Twilight collides with The Golden Compass!"), but what other choice does one have? Three weeks before little brother Chris continues the Twilight saga, Paul Weitz gets the ball rolling on another vampire property based on another popular series of novels for young adults--and getting the ball rolling is more or less all he does. It's a handy parallel to Chris's own The Golden Compass in the sense that you're expected to immerse yourself in a fantasy world where no one does anything of particular note and nothing is accomplished. People are bitten, people are transformed, and the fulfillment of legends is foretold--but when the credits roll, can you say you've actually seen anything? In its own laborious foundation-laying, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone still managed a dreaded brush with Voldemort; what does The Vampire's Assistant have to offer? Willem Dafoe and...Bill ChambersGhost World (2001) [The Criterion Collection] - Blu-ray Disctag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b7c9235a17970b2017-09-26T19:57:06-05:002017-09-27T15:53:05-05:00**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+ starring Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson, Brad Renfro, Steve Buscemi written by Daniel Clowes & Terry Zwigoff, based on the comic book by Clowes directed by Terry Zwigoff by Sydney Wegner Say "privilege" in 2017 and you will inevitably trigger an allergic reaction, particularly if you precede it with the word "white." "Privilege" feels inflammatory and overused, a casualty of the movement for basic human decency snidely referred to as "PC culture." For those to whom it applies, it can be hard to confront and accept--especially in America, where the idea that anybody got anything by luck alone goes against everything we've been taught is admirable and pure. But in order to use your unjustly-granted powers for good, the knee-jerk defensiveness needs to be agonized over and dealt with. As I've matured, I've learned that you can't grow without feeling like garbage, that the concept of learning from your mistakes often applies to learning from the ones you didn't make intentionally. Now that being a better person seems to have become a radical political act, it's something that is on my mind a lot. Buy at Amazon.com Buy at Amazon.ca RUNNING TIME 111 minutes...Bill ChambersTelluride '17: Lady Birdtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01bb09c41bb7970d2017-09-17T14:24:32-05:002017-09-17T14:26:05-05:00**½/**** starring Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges written and directed by Greta Gerwig by Walter Chaw Greta Gerwig's hyphenate debut bears the influence of erstwhile collaborator Noah Baumbach's urbane micro-comedies--Hal Hartley's, too, along with some DNA borrowed from Ghost World and Welcome to the Dollhouse for spice. It's a talky domestic drama featuring a precocious, strong-willed iconoclast who has named herself "Lady Bird" (Saoirse Ronan) and is, as a character, the best description of the film that houses her. She's smart but not book-smart and, in the end, not smart enough to avoid having her heart broken by a couple of bad decisions on her way out of senior year in high-school and the great grey beast Sacramento. She tells her first boyfriend, Danny (the already-great Lucas Hedges), that she's from the "wrong side of the tracks," which, when he lets it slip in front of Lady Bird's mom Marion (Laurie Metcalf), obviously hurts Marion's feelings a lot, but she bites her lip. When he does it, he's there to pick up Lady Bird for Thanksgiving at his grandmother's place. His grandmother lives in the nicest house on the other side of the tracks and, to feel...Walter ChawThe Breakfast Club (1985) [Widescreen] - DVDtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b7c90a7343970b2017-07-10T16:07:33-05:002017-07-10T16:07:33-05:00***/**** Image A- Sound A- starring Emilio Estevez, Paul Gleason, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson written and directed by John Hughes by Vincent Suarez Oh, how I wish I could hate The Breakfast Club. Maybe it's because I was a geeky high-school senior in 1985, when the film was released, and I defiantly loathed anything that smacked of cool. Perhaps it's because writer/producer/director John Hughes has been responsible for some of the most inane (e.g., Dutch, Curly Sue, Baby's Day Out) and unnecessary (e.g., Flubber, Miracle on 34th Street, 101 Dalmations) films in recent memory. RUNNING TIME 92 minutes MPAA R ASPECT RATIO(S) 1.85:1 LANGUAGES English DD 2.0 (Mono) CC Yes SUBTITLES French REGION 1 DISC TYPE DVD-5 STUDIO Universal Or, it might be because The Brat Pack and their films have never really held any appeal for me. Most likely, though, it's because the film is better than I would care to admit, one of those mystical instances of the whole being far greater than the sum of its parts. In any event, Universal's recent DVD release occasioned the opportunity for me to once again reassess a film which pleads "Don't You Forget About Me," and it's a film...Bill ChambersDaria: The Complete Animated Series (1997-2002) + Party Down: Season One (2009) - DVDstag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b7c8f31877970b2017-04-29T19:44:20-05:002017-04-29T19:47:49-05:00DARIA: THE COMPLETE ANIMATED SERIES Image A- Sound B- Extras B+ "Esteemsters," "The Invitation," "College Bored," "Café Disaffecto," "Malled," "This Year's Model," "The Lab Brat," "Pinch Sitter," "Too Cute," "The Big House," "Road Worrier," "The Teachings of Don Jake," "The Misery Chick," "Arts 'N' Crass," "The Daria Hunter," "Quinn the Brain," "I Don't," "That Was Then, This Is Dumb," "Monster," "The New Kid," "Gifted," "Ill," "Fair Enough," "See Jane Run," "Pierce Me," "Write Where it Hurts," "Daria!," "Through a Lens Darkly," "The Old and the Beautiful," "Depth Takes a Holiday," "Daria Dance Party," "The Lost Girls," "It Happened One Nut," "Lane Miserables," "Jake of Hearts," "Speedtrapped," "The Lawndale File," "Just Add Water," "Jane's Addition," "Partner's Complaint," "Antisocial Climbers," "A Tree Grows in Lawndale," "Murder, She Snored," "The F Word," "I Loathe a Parade," "Of Human Bonding," "Psycho Therapy," "Mart of Darkness," "Legends of the Mall," "Groped by an Angel," "Fire!," "Dye! Dye! My Darling," "Fizz Ed," "Sappy Anniversary," "Fat Like Me," "Camp Fear," "The Story of D," "Lucky Strike," "Art Burn," "One J at a Time," "Life in the Past Lane," "Aunt Nauseam," "Prize Fighters," "My Night at Daria's," "Boxing Daria" PARTY DOWN: SEASON ONE Image A- Sound A- Extras...Jefferson RobbinsMean Creek (2004) - DVDtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b7c8cda59f970b2017-02-09T00:01:00-05:002017-01-24T16:53:17-05:00****/**** Image A+ Sound A- Extras B- starring Rory Culkin, Ryan Kelley, Scott Mechlowicz, Trevor Morgan written and directed by Jacob Aaron Estes by Walter Chaw Mean Creek is poised at the magic hour of the death of innocence. It deals in corruption like a maggot will, burrowing and gnawing its way through true fauna to take its sustenance in its blithe, indifferent way from the dying of the light. The film represents in its existence and function a transitional vehicle between the end of life and rebirth. In Mean Creek, a slug crawls across cold flesh in a quiet, crepuscular moment; a snail (similar/different) is punished an instant later by a clear-eyed little girl, completing her exile from Paradise in a stroke remarkably brutal not necessarily for the act, but for the freshness of the stain on the perpetrator. The picture's title refers not to malevolence, but to a nature metaphor that works as the centre-point--the protean "mean"--between two extremes. It is that ever-tilting line that marks childhood's end: mercurial, sure, yet as substantial and rude as a brick wall. RUNNING TIME 89 minutes MPAA R ASPECT RATIO(S) 1.83:1 (16x9-enhanced) LANGUAGES English DD 5.1 English Dolby Surround CC Yes...Bill ChambersMy Bodyguard (1980) - DVDtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b8d25157b8970c2017-01-30T00:01:00-05:002017-01-12T17:35:12-05:00**½/**** Image B Sound B starring Chris Makepeace, Matt Dillon, John Houseman, Adam Baldwin screenplay by Alan Ormsby directed by Tony Bill by Bill Chambers My Bodyguard, not to be confused with the sudsy Costner-Huston thriller The Bodyguard, has been described to me as "the ultimate bully movie." I won't even toy with the idea that this feature-length Afterschool Special is the best at anything, but the film does have some merit as a teen revenge fantasy. Making his low-key directorial debut, Academy Award-winning producer Tony Bill brings visual grace sans style to this tale of the new kid in school and how he masterminds one bully's downfall through another's redemption. RUNNING TIME 96 minutes MPAA PG ASPECT RATIO(S) 1.85:1 (16x9-enhanced) 1.33:1 LANGUAGES English Dolby Surround English DD 2.0 (Mono) French DD 2.0 (Mono) CC Yes SUBTITLES English Spanish REGION 1 DISC TYPE DVD-10 STUDIO Fox Fuzzy Chris Makepeace stars as the appropriately named Clifford Peach, a hotel manager's son who transfers from private to public New York schools and, upon refusing to pay classmate Melvin Moody (Matt Dillon) for "protection" (ostensibly against a homicidal peer, but really himself), makes fast enemies of the baby-faced extortionist. A lad with keen...Bill ChambersTIFF '16: Pranktag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01bb09365116970d2016-09-13T19:46:42-05:002016-09-14T07:52:15-05:00**½/**** directed by Vincent Biron by Bill Chambers The retainer, the indifferent pompadour, the Cookie Monster table manners--it's obvious that Stefie (Étienne Galloy) doesn't have an image to protect. When two older-looking teens, Martin (Alexandre Lavigne) and Jean-Se (Simon Pigeon), invite him to participate in a bit of "Jackass" performance art (they need his phone to film it), Stefie discovers something about himself, I think: that he was lonely. Joining them on subsequent pranks, he has nothing to offer creatively but does assume the voice of the group's conscience, however muted. Often he himself is persuaded to ignore it by his desire to impress Martin's girlfriend, Lea (Constance Massicotte), who indelicately soaks up the attention of the new kid. TIFF's official guide compares Prank to Harmony Korine, but it's gentler than his work despite some scatological moments and a similar elevation of mischief to a higher calling, and it's rarely surreal for surreal's sake. There is much talk of doing drugs but a lot of it is bluster, and although they're chased by police at one point, the gang's stunts are strictly of the "Just for Laughs" variety. It might appear as if Stefie's fallen in with a bad crowd,...Bill ChambersChasing Liberty (2004) [Widescreen Edition] - DVDtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b7c84b5e1e970b2016-05-25T23:01:00-05:002016-04-27T11:04:46-05:00ZERO STARS/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C starring Mandy Moore, Matthew Goode, Jeremy Piven, Annabella Sciorra screenplay by Derek Guiley & David Schneiderman directed by Andy Cadiff by Walter Chaw Giving a whole new meaning to the term "Grand Old Party," now that Jenna and Barbara Bush have made being the first daughter delinquent-delightful again after that stick-in-the-mud scholar/ambassador Chelsea (the "Family Values" party has a little 'splainin' to do), gird yourself for no fewer than three films featuring the exploits of the most powerful girl-child in the free world: David Mamet's Spartan, the Katie Holmes starrer First Daughter, and, first out of the block, Andy Cadiff's execrable Chasing Liberty. RUNNING TIME 111 minutes MPAA PG-13 ASPECT RATIO(S) 2.35:1 (16x9-enhanced) LANGUAGES English DD 5.1 French DD 5.1 CC Yes SUBTITLES English French Spanish REGION 1 DISC TYPE DVD-9 STUDIO Warner The annual edition of Bad Judgment Theater featuring everyone's favourite holier-than-thou teen Mandy Moore, Chasing Liberty finds Moore, as first daughter Anna, hitching a ride from a stranger, hitching a ride from a trio of unkempt sheep herders, desperately throwing herself at strange men in the hopes of losing her virginity, and generally acting in a way that isn't...Walter ChawPermanent Record (1988) - DVDtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b7c8331066970b2016-05-04T23:01:00-05:002016-04-12T20:28:16-05:00***/**** Image C- Sound C+ starring Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Rubin, Alan Boyce, Pamela Gidley screenplay by Jarre Fees and Alice Liddle and Larry Ketron directed by Marisa Silver by Walter Chaw Before Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure trapped Keanu Reeves in an amber of his own inexplicable sun-baked imbecility, he appeared in a couple of genuinely good films, nursing the mistaken impression that he was actually acting. One of these pictures is Tim Hunter's elegy to ennui River's Edge; the other is Marisa Silver's curiously affecting teenage-suicide melodrama Permanent Record. In both, Reeves demonstrates a now-unsurprising affinity for the soulful burnout character, a moral compass in the morass of the amorality of Eighties introspection and hedonism. A neo-hippie destined to become Neo for real, Reeves brought to his early work a kind of befuddled earnestness that informs his best performances (in My Own Private Idaho for instance, or even the first Matrix)--a quality causing genuine concern for "Hellblazer" fans, who probably deserve a more complex Constantine. Prior to mega-stardom, however, the most enduring image of Reeves is a scummy sleeping bag tryst in River's Edge, and his awkward take on drunkenness via Ray Bolger during the climax of Permanent Record....Bill Chambers